Finite element analysis (FEA) is one of the most popular computer aided engineering tool for engineers and scientists to model and solve engineering problems relating to complex systems such as three-dimensional non-linear structural design and analysis. FEA derives its name from the manner in which the geometry of the object under consideration is specified. With the advent of the modern digital computer, FEA has been implemented as FEA software. Basically, the FEA software is provided with a model of the geometric description and the associated material properties at each point within the model. In this model, the geometry of the system under analysis is represented by solids, shells and beams of various sizes, which are called elements. The vertices of the elements are referred to as nodes. The model is comprised of a finite number of elements, which are assigned a material name to associate with material properties. The model thus represents the physical space occupied by the object under analysis along with its immediate surroundings. The FEA software then refers to a table in which the properties (e.g., stress-strain constitutive equation, Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, thermo-conductivity) of each material type are tabulated. Additionally, the conditions at the boundary of the object (i.e., loadings, physical constraints, etc.) are specified. In this fashion a model of the object and its environment is created.
FEA has been used by automobile manufacturers for optimizing both the aerodynamic performance and structural integrity of vehicles. One of the popular FEA tasks is to simulate impact events such as car crash, metal forming, bird impact, etc. Many of the prototype testing can be replaced by the computer simulations, which are preferably performed in a reasonable time frame (e.g., overnight) so that users (i.e., engineers and/or scientists) can be productive. To ensure the productivity, most of the FEA models are limited by computer's power (i.e., processing speed, memory capacity, etc.) when the FEA first used for simulating impact events. In theory, this problem should be solved when computers improve over time. However, as computing power has been increased for the past decades, the FEA model of an automobile has been increased accordingly, for example, a common FEA model of an automobile can contain more than 1,000,000 elements. Using such large size FEA model, simulating an impact event using the finite element analysis still takes very long time. To solve this problem, modern finite element analysis software is capable of executing on a multi-processor computer. As a result, many area of finite element analysis have been improved on the parallel processing. However, there is a new problem emerged when users define and specify large numbers of contact interface for an impact event. Prior art approaches of handling contact interfaces cause the multi-processor computer system to lose parallel efficiency, which results into either loss of productivity (long simulation time) or loss of accuracy (smaller FEA model).
Therefore, it would be desirable to have an improved method for simulating an impact event with large numbers of contact interface in a finite element analysis to be executed in a computer system having multiple processing units.